Skill Challenges and Pitched Battles/Naval Engagements

[Kid Charlemagne]

I'm reading through various preview threads, and it suddenly hits me that I think the Skill Challenge rules could be very easily adopted to allow for the resolution of large-scale battles. Probably a Complex skill challenge (12 success before 6 failures). Each battle would need to be set up individually, of course.

I'm especially liking this as a way to handle Naval engagements - I've got a Privateer PC in my 3.5 game, and I've been struggling to figure out a good way to handle this. A successful challenge would lead to the Captain catching his prey, with a higher ratio of successes leading to a more advantageous tactical position (and vice versa). Saying that each check takes 30 minutes could result in the quarry getting away under cover of darkness if the challenge takes too long... All kinds of ideas come to mind, and the best thing is that its all very, very simple.

What do you guys think?

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

Very cool. I like the concept. Are you adopting this for 3.5, or are you porting the character/campaign over to 4e?

What skills would you use for the challenge?

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Well, I'll probably port it over to 3.5 for this game; we're not going to upgrade to 4E, though I may do my next campaign in 4E. As for skills, that's a good question - there's nothing that really cries out as a "Tactics" skill. In 4E terms I could see using Insight, Bluff, Perception, possibly Nature (if weather might be an issue), even Intimidate (probably limited to one possible success).